The present invention relates to a machine translation system for processing an original sentence to obtain a translated sentence and, more particularly, to a machine translation system for simplifying an operation of an operator for translation processing.
In recent years, various machine translation systems for translation using a computer system have been developed, e.g., a processing system for translation English sentences to Japanese sentences or vice versa, and the like.
A basic processing operation in these systems will be briefly described.
Morphemes constituting an input original sentence or its sentence structure is analyzed to divide the original sentence into predetermined processing units, e.g., words (or phrases). A translation dictionary is referred to for each processing unit to obtain a translated word (or phrase) corresponding to the processing unit. The translated words (or translated phrases) are combined in accordance with a given translation rule, thus obtaining a translated sentence.
However, since a reliable technique for interpreting the meaning of a natural language has not yet been established, it is difficult to immediately obtain an appropriate translated sentence through the machine translation. More specifically, an English word "find", for example, has meanings "to discover by chance"; "to get by searching"; "to perceive"; "to recover (something lost)"; "to consider"; "to reach"; etc. When the word "find" is translated into Japanese, it has different translated words corresponding to the above meanings. In this manner, a single original word often has a plurality of translation possiblities. In this case, selection of a translated word possibility largely influences the translation quality from an original sentence into a translated sentence.
In a conventional system, a plurality of translation possibilities corresponding to each processing unit (original word) are displayed simultaneously or selectively so as to be presented to an operator, and the operator determines and selects an appropriate translated word to constitute a translated sentence.
However, even if a translated sentence is obtained in this manner, an inappropriate translated word often still remains in the translated sentence. The operator must correct the inappropriate translated word in the translated sentence through post-edit processing. Therefore, in the system of this type, an edit processing section (editer) for executing post processing, e.g., correction of a translated sentence, is normally provided.
When edit processing for the translated result is performed using the editer, the operation mode of the system is set in a translated-sentence edit mode for editing a translated sentence or in a translation/edit mode for translating an original sentence and editing the translated sentence. For this reason, during translation processing or translated-sentence edit porcessing, an original sentence cannot be input from an input section, e.g., a keyboard. When an original sentence is input from the input section, the translated-sectence edit mode or the translation/edit mode must be temporarily canceled and the original-sentence input mode must be set.
Therefore, this system has poor operability, and interferes with an efficient original-sentence input operation and translated-sentence edit operation.